Amanda Vaill > Quotes

“Next year, however, the legislators who witnessed Hamilton’s speech from the gallery will pass a new libel law, allowing truth as a defense to a libel charge “where published with good motive and for justifiable ends.” And sixteen years later, in 1821, this principle will be incorporated into New York’s second constitution. Hamilton, though, won’t be there to see it.”
― Amanda Vaill, Pride and Pleasure: The Schuyler Sisters in an Age of Revolution

“We have always believed it good to leave a place before it leaves you.”
― Amanda Vaill, Everybody Was So Young: Gerald and Sara Murphy: A Lost Generation Love Story

“Le Bal du comte d’Orgel.”
― Amanda Vaill, Everybody Was So Young: Gerald and Sara Murphy: A Lost Generation Love Story

“In a road-mender’s hut near Vézelay they found a message scrawled on the wall: “La vie est un desert, la femme un chameau. Pour voir le desert il faut monter sur le chameau.” (“Life is a desert, woman is a camel. If you want to see the desert you have to ride the camel.”)”
― Amanda Vaill, Everybody Was So Young: Gerald and Sara Murphy: A Lost Generation Love Story

“There can be no compromise, no truce,” the general told Allen then. “I shall advance. I shall take the capital. I will save Spain from marxism at whatever cost.” “That means,” Allen asked, for clarification, “that you will have to shoot half Spain?” Franco smiled. “I said whatever the cost.” The Spanish Civil War had begun.”
― Amanda Vaill, Hotel Florida: Truth, Love, and Death in the Spanish Civil War

“how to write truly and having found what is true, to project it in such a way that it becomes part of the experience of the person who reads it.”
― Amanda Vaill, Hotel Florida: Truth, Love, and Death in the Spanish Civil War